1) Very poor excuse and untrue. From the very begining (1957), the purpose of the EU has always been to integrate, step by step into a deeper economic AND political union. The UK was not lied to. Though initially reluctant, it joined because it couldn't miss the opportunity of a 350 million consumers market. De Gaulle strongly opposed Britain's entry, he knew everybody would regret it. How true.

2) About the referendum: so what is your government doing? Once again, the door is wide open. The EU is based on free agreement and nobody is forcing the UK to stay. The EU is not that kind of communist dictatorship the British press loves to portray.

"It doesn’t when our economic views are so diametrically opposed."

No they aren't. You want them to be opposed, but the facts clearly show that the EU and UK economic views are fundamentaly in line. (isn't the problem elswhere?)

The EU promotes freedom of trade. It got rid of its internal tariff walls and it has been increasingly lowering its external tariff walls on manufactured goods with the rest of the world for the past 45 years. It trades with all continents, including booming Asia and other BRICS, and when it does it has the bargaining power of being a 500 million consumers market. Only some agricultural and textile goods remain subsidized and by the way the very same applies to the USA, Canada and Australia.

I'm not trying to convince you that the EU is the paradise on Earth (who is?). I'm just pointing out that your "free-trade" obsession and your constant opposing the EU and the UK in everything is just not coherent with the reality.

Once again, isn't the problem elswhere? Isn't Britain somehow stuck in its own historical contradictions?

"France and Germany et al are yesterdays news as the EU heads towards 'political union', so their days are numbered."

So everybody is mistaken, but the UK? What makes you feel so sure about that?

You're a wishful thinker, I am sorry to say. The prospect of a British exit exalts your nationalist feelings, but pragmatically speaking it would be a mistake for Britain. Face it. We are not in the XIX th century or in 1940 anymore, the is no Napoleon nor Hitler anymore, the EU is already - and by far - the largest free trade block in the world. Wake-up!

Yes, but Canada, NZ and Australia are all "commodity" countries, living off the things they did up in the ground, i.e. natural resources. Singapore is a "city state" that lives off its financial sector. If London was a country of its own it could do well, but the rest of the UK would sink very quickly.

Modern Britain has changed its perceptions towards the EU. The rest of the Union should perhaps wonder, was De Gaulle right to veto UK Membership in his time?
The European Treaties in the form of the TEU and Single European Act clearly outline the eventual desire to form a Political, Monetary and even defensive Union. This is literally and very clearly spelled out in the various EU and WEU, EDF and ECSU treaties.
In fact, this agenda for the European Project has existed since the second World War. Its not new at all. It was -> case in point <- actually encouraged and almost mandatory for European Nations to do this in order to receive American Marshall Plan help.
This idea even went much further than people commonly know - it included a complete unification of all military continental forces to form a second Pillar within NATO. (under American auspices) As well as an economic, monetary and political Union.
No --- Britain's Leaders and people knew Exactly what they were signing on for. They've known since 1948.
To Claim otherwise is an insult to British politicians' command of the English language and their ability to read it. Lets not give in to spreading falshoods and misinformation.
Also:
For clarity's sake: The EU is a Supranational Union, it is not intended to be a Federation. A Supranational Union is an entity that is found between Confederation and Federation.
A federation implies the subsumption of member states and loss of international "statehood". There is no proposal for a political Union that apparantly goes this far. None of the EU Nations could (currently?) sell it to their demos.
If it were to happen then the EU 27 Nations would get kicked out of the United Nations and WTO on account of them not being "nations" any more. The EU would then become a member to replace them. I predict this won't happen for the sheer reason that its much more appealing to speak with 27 mouths all saying the same thing. It gives you much more clout and subtle ways to maneuver.

I hope I'm not wrong about this, but I think there is room for optimism.
I don't see the average man in the street ranting on about how they hate the EU and want out. It just isn't top of most people's agendas. Certainly, when you look at the result of the recent Rotherham by-election, there is clearly concern about immigration. Labour won that seat but UKIP came second and the BNP third.
UKIP get an awful lot of publicity because they've been picking up protest votes in by-elections and European elections. But I don't think it's because most of the population would like to see Mr. Farage as Prime Minister or even because they're rabidly Europhobic. UKIP are mainly a repository of protest votes for those dissatisfied with the 3 main parties. They still don't have a Westmninster seat, and without Mr. Farage (they seem a bit of a leader-dominated party in any event) I doubt there'd be quite so much of a force.
Basically the pro-European case hasn't been made out. Ed Miliband hinted at it in a recent speech, but aside from Mr, Farage, certain tabloid papers regularly feature anti-EU headlines on their front pages. Their animosity to the EU could be because of its regulations against monopolies and in favour of competition.
I, for one, find the international image being painted of Britain by the antics of our politicians, as decribed in the article, quite embarrassing. I travel abroad quite a lot and don't feel comfortable with the idea that our country is the spoilsport who'll take their bat home if they don't get their way. Because that's the way the British in general could be regarded. We rely heavily on tourism. Though the well-run Olympics have undoubtedly boosted our profile in the short term, I don't feel that the prospect of visiting a rainy island full of introverted, jingoistic xenophobes sounds very appealing.
But of course, we're not all like that, and I hope that when, if, it comes to the crunch on Europe, I will be proved right. A referendum taken in January 1975 showed about half the population wanting to leave the then EEC, and only about a third happy to remain in. There were vociferous "no" campaigners around at that time, both left and right. Now I believe we're taking far too much notice of snapshot opinion polls taken in mid-term, when there's been no proper debate. That's not how this country is governed. You elect your MPs based on their manifesto. UKIP can stand in all constituencies in 2015, but my hunch is that the outcome will not see Mr. Farage in number 10.
So to conclude, when the debate started in 1975, and the case for membership was made, the result of the referendum was overwhelmingly in favour of staying in. That case hasn't really been made since then, but I'm reassured by the further finding that, whilst over 60% of pensioners asked in a recent survey thought that we should leave the EU, less than 30% of under 25s felt the same way.

Why do you think there would be an end to free trade? Free trade is economic orthodoxy amongst the elites in the West (for its major political parties, influential think tanks, big business etc). It's survival is hardly dependent on EU membership.

We're not in a Union with the USA but somehow it still manages to be our largest trading partner, due to trade agreeements. Turkey is not a member of the EU - but 58% of its exports still go to EU countries. For EU member UK the proportion is actually much lower, at 45% (and falling).

More specifically, Germany and France enjoy large trade surpluses with the UK. It's more a customer for them than a supplier and so they have every ($) incentive not to cut off their own nose and shrink their businesses. The UK bought $35 billion of French goods last year (France's 4th largest customer) and it bought $88 billion of German goods (more than Italy, China or Japan did).

The Germans are nothing if not pragmatic about money - do you think they would cut their business out of tens of billions of $ of annual sales? Do you think the recession hit French would throw thousands and thousands of French workers on the dole unnecessarily, or that the famously fractious French farmers would stand by while their government cut them out of one of their biggest traditional markets? All that wine and cheese going unsold, left to be paid for by EU taxpayers to support prices rather than bought by the British...Expensive. Do you think Mercedes, BMW, VW, Siemens and Audi might have something to say to the German government if it sought to erect trade barriers and lose them massive sales?

Other countries would have even more of an incentive to get a free trade deal in place. The UK is by far Ireland's No. 1 export market, way ahead of Germany or France, and Ireland is still trying to crawl out of a deep recession. Would it stand by and watch a peevish EU trade war with Britain throw it into a full-blown depression?

*external boundary* not like other countries - the EU is the world's strongest force for global free trade. In no small part thanks to the UK (also thanks to Germany, Scandinavia & most of Eastern Europe - but the UK is needed to swing the politics against France, Italy, Greece & Spain).

The numbers speak for themselves:

The EU is by far the strongest force in the world for liberal free trade. The numbers speak for themselves: EU exports to non-EU countries are 3.35 times America's, and EU imports are 2.55 times US levels (despite similar consumption levels). http://t.co/Lbh7nQBQ

The EU is presently finalising a free trade agreement with Canada that runs much deeper than NAFTA (opening up a wider range of products & services, and removing far more non-tariff barriers). The EU actually has a more genuine free trade agreement with South Korea, running much deeper than America's. The EU is half way though developing a wider free trade area bringing in the whole Mediterranean area (Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Israel, Lebanon & Turkey so far - perhaps Syria). In West Africa, in Southern Africa and in Eastern Europe, the EU is making bits of aid and investment finance available conditional on incremental trade opening and extension of rule of law. The EU dragged Russia into the WTO. The EU is finalising free trade with Singapore, and is about to begin deep free trade negotiations (same model as Korea - that really is radical) with Japan (pretty closed to the world for the most part, with massive price disparities & arbitrage opportunities across services & products - this will be awesome of we can pull it off, and fantastic for business).

And of course, the EU and US are about to enter tentative negotiations on a free trade agreement (the full launch, I gather, should happen after EU-Canada). We've deliberately build the EU-Canada free trade agreement with a new rules of origin definition, so that Canadian businesses can import from the US (tariff free under NAFTA) and re-export to the EU tariff free (providing only minimal added value in Canada). That puts enormous pressure on American businesses to lobby for US-EU free trade. So we've strategically laid the ground to force a grand compromise with the US (they talk the talk, but the US is one of the most protectionist & insular developed countries out there, thanks to Congress re-writing & building special interests into every trade treaty that the executive signs).

But with the bargaining power of the whole EU market, and using the Canada-hold on American business and whilst also making progress with Japan, we finally have a serious chance of deep Transatlantic free trade.

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If that's the case, why can't the UK have free trade from the outside? Well, it's worth noting that the countries which have free trade (South Korea, Turkey, EEA, Switzerland, South Africa, etc) are signing up to a very large body of EU law & standards (which they have very little influence over). That isn't petty - this is part of the free trade process, making it far easier for business to expand across borders, bid for contracts, automatically comply with regulation, etc.

Even if outside of the EU, we would have to comply with most EU regulation that matters (most of it relates to transparency rules, non-bias in tendering, common product standards, etc - most damaging UK regulation comes from Whitehall, with health & safety, awful tax design, form filling, etc). The significant bit that we would be able to leave - the social chapter - we could probably negotiate an opt out from without leaving the EU (and we probably should go for precisely that).

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*on recommends, insinuating that there's a way of working the feature? Or that I'd be petty enough to care or bother? Presumably there are people reading the lead article & proceeding into the comments section.

It speaks volumes of the EU if it's to put up trade barriers out of spite for territory it can't have.

Also how do you anticipate smaller countries even surviving in a political union, their businesses and trade will be gobbled up by the larger countries that will set the rules. The likes of Ireland will have its tax changed and its businesses relocating to Paris in no time.

The Commonwealth Realms are those that the UK still shares its head of state with, the others are members of the same club.

Even if the UK left the EU it would still be part of the Council of Europe, the Commonwealth of Nations, NATO, UN & UNSC, IMF and World Bank, WTO, G8, IMO, IAEA... And that is just the ones I can think of off the top of my head.

The UK would be far, far, far from isolated. In fact leaving the EU would give the UK a bigger voice in each of those, as it could act without the EU looking over its shoulder.

France and Germany et al are yesterdays news as the EU heads towards 'political union', so their days are numbered.

This is a case of two people going in opposite directions. Most nations in the EU (or at least their elites) want a proper federation. Most Britons (and now most of Britain's elites) are implacably opposed to British membership in any such thing.
Canada does fine not being part of the US; New Zealand does fine not being part of Australia; Singapore does fine not being part of Malaysia. Britain will be fine not being part of the EU.
In the words of Tom Paine, 'Tis time to part.'

I've found a soundtrack to this whole debate:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0qmfgUmvic

The facts are that the UK is 5th in the world for innovations, 7th and 8th largest economy in the world going by GDP and PPP (3rd and 2nd in Europe), the UK economy is recovering faster than the single currency (Germany is in trouble and could fall into recession), is 4th (above the US and only european country in the top 5) place to do business in the world...

So why is membership of the europen project needed? The truth is that it is not, the UK can do fine without it.

Well, the Nobel peace prize winner EU has been pretty good at one thing: raising tensions between the member states. Northerners depict the Southerners as lazy bastards, Southerners say the Germans are nazis, while the rest wants Greece and Britain out.

There is no denial that the EU has been successful in a few areas such as foreign trade agreements and deals as the Schengen treaty.

On the other hand all this could be possible without the undemocratic and bloated bureaucratic body in Brussels. Barroso, Van Rompuy, Schultz, Verhofstadt, Kroes, Lady Ashton... something went very-very wrong there.